Tag Archives: Climate Change

This is from the Daily Signal, and what is interesting is how the Democrats respond to the scientific evidence presented by the scientists.

Excerpt:

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz convened a subcommittee hearing Tuesday to dispute the validity of research from climate “alarmists,” whose findings have become central to crafting environmental policy.

Cruz used his opening remarks to detail the 2013 expedition where a ship of 74 people sent into Antarctica to research climate change got stuck in ice, forcing an airlift rescue a week later.

“This expedition was there to document how the ice was vanishing in the Antarctic, but the ship became stuck,” Cruz said before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness. “It had run into an inconvenient truth, as Al Gore might put it.”

Cruz, who chairs the subcommittee, also noted Secretary of State John Kerry’s 2009 claim that the Arctic would be “ice-free” by the summer of 2013—which was the same year the researchers became trapped in ice.

Republicans on the committee said the hearing was intended to shed light on “opposing viewpoints in the field of climate science,” which Cruz said are “reflexively” brushed aside by policymakers.

He repeatedly pointed to satellite data that found no significant global warming during the past 18 years, a slowdown often referred to as the warming “pause.”

“Global warming alarmists don’t like these data. They are inconvenient to their narrative,” Cruz said. “But facts and evidence matter.”

Judith Curry, former chair of Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, testified that while climate scientists uniformly agree that surface temperatures have increased during the past century, there is “considerable” disagreement about whether humans drive global warming and if warming is dangerous to the planet.

Curry’s research led her to findings that natural causes could be playing a larger role in warming than human activity, challenging what many consider “settled” conclusions in the climate debate.

But instead of leading to reignited deliberation, Curry said the science community quickly branded her a “heretic” for challenging the status quo.

“In their efforts to promote their ‘cause,’ the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem,” she said, adding: “This behavior risks destroying science’s reputation for honesty and objectivity. Without this objectivity and honesty, scientists become regarded as merely another lobbyist group.”

Democrats denounced the four witnesses Republicans called to testify as climate change “deniers” in a press conference held prior to the hearing.

I have blogged about the growing ice extents and the 18-year pause in global warming (according to atmospheric measurements, not Al Gore movies) before. I am glad that someone is trying to confront the Democrats with the experimental science.

More people are looking at the records of the presidential candidates on issues like global warming socialism, and as a result, Cruz is climbing in the polls:

Thirty-five percent of Republican primary voters support Trump, up 13 points since October, and his highest level of support in CBS News polling. Ted Cruz (16 percent) has moved into second place, while Ben Carson, who led the October poll, has dropped to third.

Marco Rubio is in fourth place with 9 percent. Jeb Bush is getting the backing of just 3 percent of Republican primary voters nationwide, his lowest percentage to date in CBS News polling. Carly Fiorina’s support has also dropped; she is at just 1 percent now.

Most of the interviews for this poll were conducted before Trump made statements concerning a ban on Muslims entering the United States.

I realize there is a certain segment of the population that is supporting Trump because they vote for people based on sound bites. A candidate who sounds tough excites them more than a candidate who has performed tough actions. It takes work to look into the candidate’s past and see what actions they’ve taken to prove their conservative convictions. Trump supporters seem unwilling to put the work in. Trump is on record as being “very pro-choice” – he even supports partial-birth abortion. And and he also supports the DREAM act and amnesty. Some people might like to think that saying “I’m pro-life” makes you pro-life, but sane people think that pro-life credentials are established by pro-life actions. Trump has no pro-life actions. And border security credentials are established by border security actions. Trump has no border security actions. And of course, Trump considers gay marriage to be “the law of the land”, because 5 judges said so.

Election time is not the time for people to be swayed by words. It’s the time to look for actions.

Global warming alarmism is big business. On one side you have Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Environmental Defense Fund, The Climate Project and dozens upon dozens of other non-governmental organizations who solicit hundreds of millions from private donors and from government, and who in turn award lucrative grants to further their agenda.

You also have the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Health, the Departments of Commerce and Agriculture, both Houses of Congress and many more government agencies, spraying global warming money at anything that moves and at staggering rates — billions of dollars.

And then you also have every major and minor university — with contributions from every department, from Critical Literature Theory to Women’s Studies — all with their hands out and eager to provide the support Greenpeace, the government and others desire. Add to that another two or three dozen think tanks which are also sniffing for grants or which support government intervention to do the impossible and stop the earth’s climate from changing.

Every scientific organization which is dependent on grant money has released a statement saying “something must be done” about global warming. They’re supported, fawned over and feted by just about every news and media agency. And don’t forget the leadership of most major organized religions have their own statements — and their hands out.

We’re not done: we still have to add the dozens of Solyndra-type companies eager to sell the government products, to get “green” subsidies or to support its global-warming agenda. Included in that list are oil companies. Oil companies?

How much money are we talking about? Billions:

Joanne Nova has documented the massive amount of money pouring from government into the pockets of individuals and groups associated with the environment. “The U.S. government has provided over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, foreign aid, and tax breaks.” $79 billion.

Now it’s important to note that when the government hands out money, they are not handing out part of their profits from the sale of useful products and services, the way a private company might. No. What government does is they borrow money from future taxpayers and add it to the national debt. That’s why our national debt has doubled under Obama and will be $20 trillion by the time he leaves office in January 2017. So, government is busy manufacturing support for government intervention and regulation of businesses and individuals using money that will be taken from future job creators and taxpayers.

Would you like to have your money back so you can support causest that you care about instead of global warming socialism? So would I. But that’s why people ought to support slimming down government and letting it only perform those minimalist duties that are laid out for it in the Constitution.

Is everything is going to be fine with this Iran deal? Because judging from their willingness to violate previous orders from the international community, they are not really serious about honoring international agreements.

The terrorist state of Iran over the weekend successfully test-fired the Emad — which means pillar — its first precision-guided, long-range surface-to-surface missile. As the Center for Strategic & International Studies’ Anthony Cordesmannotes, the Emad “is essentially a Shahab-3, but with a maneuvering re-entry vehicle to improve system accuracy and complicate missile defense.”

Iran’s Shahab-3 is based on North Korea’s Nodong-1, which in turn is based on the Soviet Scud — a tactical missile that was adapted to carry a nuclear warhead of up to 80 kilotons. Its range exceeds 1,000 miles — meaning it can reach Israel, Saudi Arabia and NATO member Turkey — and its accuracy is within 600 yards of the target.

The Obama administration reacted by complaining that the test violated the 5-year-old U.N. Security Council resolution 1929, prohibiting Iran from any activities related to ballistic missiles, and the State Department warned it will raise the issue at the United Nations.

Anyway, it’s not a big deal because Obama complained, and that should fix it. Well, he thinks it will.

Global Warming

Anyway, this whole “nuclear missiles in the hands of terrorists” thing is just a distraction from the more pressing problem of global warming. That’s the real threat we need to be worried about.

Global warming is a lot hotter than a nuclear missile detonation. Pretty sure. The science is clear on this.

The liberal Huffington Post reports that Pew Research says that Americans don’t agree with Obama on his threat assessment:

Americans are less concerned about climate change than they are about the Islamic State, Iran’s nuclear program and other threats, according to a new study released by the Pew Research Center on Tuesday.

[…]Pew asked respondents in 40 nations whether they were “very concerned” about climate change and six other major global issues, giving them the option to respond either “yes” or “no.” The study was conducted from March to May 2015.

The Islamic State topped Americans’ list of concerns, with 68 percent of Americans reporting that they were “very concerned” about the militant group in Iraq and Syria. More than half of American respondents were also worried about Iran’s nuclear program (62 percent), cyber-attacks (59 percent), and global economic instability (51 percent).

It’s a good thing we have such a smart President, because he is able to focus on the real problems that are an immediate threat to our survival.

This interview with liberal scientist Freeman Dyson appeared in the UK Register.

Introduction:

The life of physicist Freeman Dyson spans advising bomber command in World War II, working at Princeton University in the States as a contemporary of Einstein, and providing advice to the US government on a wide range of scientific and technical issues.

He is a rare public intellectual who writes prolifically for a wide audience. He has also campaigned against nuclear weapons proliferation.

At America’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dyson was looking at the climate system before it became a hot political issue, over 25 years ago. He provides a robust foreword to a report written by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cofounder Indur Goklany on CO2 – a report published[PDF] today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

An Obama supporter who describes himself as “100 per cent Democrat,” Dyson says he is disappointed that the President “chose the wrong side.” Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere does more good than harm, he argues, but it is not an insurmountable crisis. Climate change, he tells us, “is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts?”

Excerpt:

What has happened in the past 10 years is that the discrepancies between what’s observed and what’s predicted have become much stronger. It’s clear now the models are wrong, but it wasn’t so clear 10 years ago. I can’t say if they’ll always be wrong, but the observations are improving and so the models are becoming more verifiable.

[…]It’s very sad that in this country, political opinion parted [people’s views on climate change]. I’m 100 per cent Democrat myself, and I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on this issue, and the Republicans took the right side.

Is carbon dioxide as bad as the politicians say?

Nope:

To any unprejudiced person reading this account, the facts should be obvious: that the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide as a sustainer of wildlife and crop plants are enormously beneficial, that the possibly harmful climatic effects of carbon dioxide have been greatly exaggerated, and that the benefits clearly outweigh the possible damage.

I consider myself an unprejudiced person and to me these facts are obvious. But the same facts are not obvious to the majority of scientists and politicians who consider carbon dioxide to be evil and dangerous. The people who are supposed to be experts and who claim to understand the science are precisely the people who are blind to the evidence.

[…]The scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonizing carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence.”

E. Calvin Beisner had more to say about beneficial effects of CO2 on agriculture in an article on the Stream.

He writes:

To call CO2 “carbon pollution” is not only bad chemistry and bad toxicology but also bad biology. Carbon dioxide is essential to all plant growth. The higher its concentration, the better plants grow. Below 170 ppm, plants die. At the roughly 280 ppm at the start of the Industrial Revolution, plants are “sucking air,” so to speak — barely getting enough. At today’s 400 ppm, plants grow much better — so much better that a study by researchers at the Technische Universität München found forests around the world growing up to 70 percent faster today than 50 years ago because of it. Earth is literally greening because of added CO2.

Plants will grow still better as CO2 concentration continues to rise. Thousands of empirical studies, as opposed to mere models, have found that, on average, for every doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, there is about a 35 percent increase in the efficiency of plant growth. Plants grow better in wetter and drier soils and in warmer and colder temperatures, widening their ranges and increasing their adaptability to climate changes, reducing the risk of biodiversity loss. They make better use of soil nutrients, better resist diseases and pests, and improve the ratio of fruit to fiber.

The consequence is more food for plant-eaters and eaters of plant eaters — i.e., for pretty much everything. Most importantly, it means more affordable food for the world’s poor.

A review of the refereed literature on the subject found “the … monetary value of this benefit amount[ed] to a total sum of $3.2 trillion over the 50-year period 1961–2011. Projecting the monetary value … forward … reveals it will likely bestow an additional $9.8 trillion on crop production between now and 2050.”

So honest, well-informed discussion of any policy — cap and trade, “carbon tax,” renewable mandates, etc. — to reduce CO2 emissions should first recognize the benefits of increasing its concentration in the atmosphere, not just for people but for all animals. Any rationale for reducing emissions must prove that they exact a cost that outweighs this benefit.

Ah, but being honest about the benefits would not allow our democratic socialist betters to have the platform they need to convince us to let them rule us, and control our lives down to the temperatures in our homes, what cars we drive and how much we can drive.

This article from Investors Business Daily. It talks about Obama’s plan to save the planet from global warming. The plan is called the “Clean Power Plan”.

Excerpt:

Unveiled in August, this sweeping regulation will force states to slash their carbon dioxide emissions by between 7% and 48%, potentially costing families and businesses some $366 billion in higher electricity costs over the next 15 years. Yet EPA-funded models show that it will have no detectable impact on climate, if it has any impact at all.

The campaign quietly began in December 2013, when the White House met with aides to Gov. Jerry Brown, D-Calif.; Gov. Jay Inslee, D-Wash.; and then-Gov. John Kitzhaber, D-Ore. (Kitzhaber has since resigned following revelations about his office’s unethical conduct while promoting green energy policies.)

They wanted to ensure that states governed by Republicans felt significant pressure to implement this dubious federal mandate. They even hoped to “compel” utility companies operating across blue and red state lines to bring Republicans around.

This plan required hiring so-called “orchestrators” in key states. These positions, underwritten by private benefactors, would be “closely tied to each governor.” Their ultimate goal was to organize state-based campaigns involving renewable-energy companies, nongovernmental organizations, state officeholders and more.

As the White House wrote at the time, “We’ve got a few other tracks with private sector and unusual allies.” They included an extended campaign to enlist public officeholders beyond coastal liberal enclaves — the “flyover states,” as one email called them. More than a dozen governors’ offices were brought on board. Some are particularly surprising.

For example, Kentucky’s governor is now on record publicly saying that the president’s plan would be economically “disastrous,” yet the documents show his office among the “core group” and one of five that “welcomed quiet engagement” but couldn’t “commit … publicly.”

Other states keeping their interest under wraps included Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Tennessee.

Wow. If the global warming alarmists at the EPA don’t think that Obama’s plan will do anything to the climate, then why would we raise our own electricity rates to achieve nothing? What is most striking to me is some of the supposedly red states that are showing interest in this crap sandwich. Tennessee? Arkansas? Those two states have Republican governors. What is going on here?